Image Art Workshop

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Texture: A good way to break creative block is to collage rice papers and paper scraps onto heavy watercolor paper with matte medium. See the example above. After it's dry, use pastels, pencil, watercolor, acrylics, or whatever you wish to finish the piece!

Love those old
wallpaper books!:

Ask for old swatch books free from the paint store, and use
the vinyl samples as a support for various media. Oil pastels are great because
you can layer and sgraffito the pastel and enjoy a bit of the background
pattern showing through. See below.﻿﻿﻿﻿

Oil pastel over vinyl, then scratched through.

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They DO look like china flowers!

Make your own “porcelain” flowers:

Believe it or not, these “porcelain” blooms are fabric
flowers dipped in tinted plaster of Paris!

A cool technique with acrylics:See my own above! I plan to use this cut up into pieces! Create interesting backgrounds with rubber cement, to keep
certain areas white. First, apply some rubber cement and let it dry, paint a
color and let dry, apply rubber cement in an interesting pattern and let dry. Do again with another color. When that’s dry,
pick up or rub off the cement across the entire piece, and see what is
underneath.

(I did the one shown above 4 or 5 times on a single white surface, and
needed elbow grease to remove all the rubber cement!)

Lefties:

For left-handed artists...turn your spiral bound sketchbook
upside down and work from the back of the book. The spirals will be on the
right side and not interfere with your hand.

A fun exercise to
motivate you:

When you need inspiration, try the two-hand method. Pick up
a different-colored marker or colored pencil in each hand and draw something—or nothing! Move both hands at the
same time, alongside each other in a similar pattern. You'll be amazed at what
your non-dominant hand can produce. A great warm-up tool.